know what he wants, but I do know that whatever it is he wants it very
badly."

"And he thinks he'll get it by asking him to dinner? There seems to me
an obvious flaw in Berkeley's reasoning. I doubt if Vetch is the kind of
man who follows when you hold out an apple. He appears to be exactly the
opposite, and I think he's more likely to dash off than to come when he
is called. I wonder, by the way, if they are going to have Mrs.
Stribling?"

"Rose Stribling?" A gleam of anger shone in Corinna's eyes. "Why should
that interest you?"

"Oh, they say--at least Mrs. Berkeley says, and if there is any
misinformation abroad she ought to be aware of it--that Mrs. Stribling's
latest attachment to her train is the Governor himself."

He had expected his gossip to arouse Corinna, and in this he was not
mistaken. Springing up from her relaxed position, she sat straight and
unbending, with her indignant eyes on his face. "Why, I thought the war
had cured her."

"The war was not a cure; it was merely a temporary drug for our vanity,"
he rejoined gaily. "It didn't cure me, so you could hardly regard it as
a remedy for Mrs. Stribling's complaint. I imagine coquetry is a more
obstinate malady even than priggishness, and, Heaven knows, I tried hard
enough to get rid of that."

"I hoped you would," admitted Corinna. "But, dear boy, the way to make
you human--and you've never been really human all through, you know--was